Fingerprints

Directed and Written by Cong Yu, Tao Zi

Duration: 30 minutes

Fingerprints is an environmental physical theater performed by non-professional actors. The work is developed through the movement of housekeeping and the farfetched, impossible notions of cleaning, which is marketed and promoted by the booming housekeeping service industry in China.

The first version of the work was performed in June, at the Aranya Theater Festival 2021, by the open sea, on the touristic Aranya beach. Fingerprints is set in a hypothetical, urban, middle-class, domestic scene, where a mistress, a cleaning lady, a dog and a non-human character interacts. Part of the work translates Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A through the non-professional actors’ movement. The individuality of the non-professional actors’ bodies, which is shown through their own movement, despite efforts to act out as a character, are essential to this work. During the scenes breaks, the actors exchange roles on the stage by taking off and on the characters’ clothes. It is important that the exchanges happen smoothly in front of the audience, as the work is also about the performativity of theater and identities.